Robert Chisholm

[Jobs, Growth and Long-Term Prosperity Act, May 10th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, the Environment Commissioner reported the other day about hundreds of contaminated sites across this country, the results, in effect, of lax environmental assessment laws and protection.

I ask the member opposite if he is not concerned that the gutting the Conservatives are proposing of environmental laws and the Fisheries Act would lead to further environmental devastation across this country.

[Jobs, Growth and Long-Term Prosperity Act, May 10th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate what the member had to say. His interests are no different from mine or anybody else's in wanting people to have access to good jobs.

I wonder if he would comment on the fact that in the government's haste to create good jobs is the effect of taking away of the Fisheries Act or the environmental assessment legislation to sufficiently guard against the soiling, the contamination of rivers, streams, air and land that will not be fixed for generations. Is that not a distance too far to go in our haste to create a few jobs in the short term.

[Workplace Safety, May 8th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, tomorrow marks the 20th anniversary of the Westray Mine explosion.

Although it happened in the small town of Plymouth, Nova Scotia, it was a tragedy for all Canadians. We remember the 26 miners who perished in this preventable disaster. I would like to think that we have learned from the tragic death of those 26 men. My thoughts remain with the families of those brothers, sons and fathers.

In 2003, this House passed the Westray bill that introduced laws aimed to hold employers accountable for the health and safety of their staff. However, since the tragic event in 1992, over 8,000 workers have died on the job and no one has ever been charged in those deaths.

We must take questions of accountability and safety in the workplace seriously. It is incumbent upon me, members of this House and all Canadians to recognize that nobody should have to sacrifice their health or their life for a job.

[Jobs, Growth and Long-term Prosperity Act, May 8th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, a motion to the effect of splitting up the bill in order that it receive proper scrutiny has already been made by the House leader of the official opposition, and we certainly support that.

In terms of the specifics of the bill being scrutinized, in the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans we heard the other day from the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources. It works closely with DFO, commercial groups and environmental groups on the whole ecosystem and fish habitat in the Great Lakes. Those officials do not know what the impact of these changes will be. They want to be part of the discussion before the changes go through to ensure they will be able to make them work to protect fish habitat and to protect the ecosystem of the Great Lakes for all Ontarians.

[Jobs, Growth and Long-term Prosperity Act, May 8th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives are gutting environmental regulations in order to allow for the development of natural resources, in most cases, oil, unfettered.

Tomorrow is the 20th anniversary of the Westray Mine disaster in which 26 miners died simply because the government of the day was not paying attention to its own rules and regulations and was not ensuring that the enforcement happened and that those workers were being protected.

That is what happens when a government does not pay attention to its own rules and waters them down to the point where they have no effect. The Conservative government better start recognizing that.

[Jobs, Growth and Long-term Prosperity Act, May 8th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak on the very reasoned amendment from the member for Parkdale—High Park to Bill C-38.

I rose a moment ago and asked the previous speaker a question about the fact that a budget was introduced a few weeks ago when the Minister of Finance, on behalf of the government, talked about the government's direction and where it wants to allocate resources. While Conservatives talked about it as a jobs and prosperity budget, we know they are laying off tens of thousands of workers at a time when they are talking about creating jobs and we know that they have made a frontal assault on senior citizens in this country, yet lo and behold, when we see Bill C-38, we find that the damage and the destruction the government is intent on waging in this country are much greater than we would have imagined.

The previous speaker talked about how the government has engaged in massive consultation with Canadians and how Bill C-38 is exactly what Canadians want. I understand that the finance committee travelled across the country and held pre-budget consultations with Canadians, but never once was it suggested to Canadians that the government was going to gut environmental laws. Never once in those consultations or any of the consultations that happened in Nova Scotia on behalf of the Minister of Finance was there ever any discussion about the fact that the government was going to gut the Fisheries Act—completely turn it on its head and take away the power that existed in the Fisheries Act to protect fish habitat. Never once did it say anything to Canadians about its intention to do that.

I will give Conservatives credit. They did give us a bit of a heads-up on the OAS. There was an announcement by the Prime Minister. When he was in Davos drinking Chablis with his friends and talking off the cuff, he said that he was going to transform this country and that he would start by ripping dollars out of the pockets of senior citizens in 2023. I do not care if it is in 2012, 2015 or 2023; it is an attack on seniors in this country. That is what the government has done.

Now we have Bill C-38, which goes after the environment, fisheries, workers and seniors, as well as the accountability of the Auditor General to ensure that taxpayers' dollars being properly spent by a whole host of agencies. The complexity of the changes being proposed in this bill boggle the mind.

I had a conversation with a retired scientist from DFO who had been involved in the environment for over 35 years. When he initially examined the changes that were being proposed, he said the initial changes to subsection 35(1) were not too bad and that they would strengthen a bit of the problem with this and a bit of the problem with that. However, he then said the that other shoe drops, with the government bringing in changes that are going to completely wipe out any of the improvements that were brought in and wipe out the effectiveness of the provisions in the Fisheries Act that deal with the protection of fish habitat.

The most damaging part of this whole bill is the attack being waged on fishing communities across this country and on the ecosystem, frankly, because fish habitat is about the ecosystem. It is about the interrelatedness of the water and the land to ensure that we have a variety of species in this world to contribute to the betterment of our society. Some of it may be commercially viable, but that is not the reason it is protected; habitat is protected because we want to make sure we have a strong and viable ecosystem. Habitat is the water and land necessary for the survival of all species, including fish. Habitat destruction is the most common reason for species decline, and the Fisheries Act has been essential in protecting fish habitats and the fisheries they support.

I have spent the last couple of weeks sitting in on the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans, where we heard witnesses talk about the problems with invasive species in the Great Lakes. I am from the east coast and I do not know a whole lot about invasive species in the Great Lakes. I know a lot about the cod moratorium and how it devastated the coastal communities in Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador, P.E.I., and New Brunswick. I also know how lobsters, scallops and other crustaceans have rebounded to fill the gap and I know that the fishery is critical to hundreds of thousands of families in this country—to communities, to families, to children, to our very way of being.

What I have learned over the past couple of days is just how closely connected our whole system is. Members have heard about the zebra mussel and how it clogs up the bottom of many of the Great Lakes and attaches itself to the outfalls of power plants and creates a great deal of problems. The quagga mussel is now also part of that.

There is another invasive species, a fish. I have forgotten its name, but it eats the mussels. The combination of the two creates botulism and results in huge fish kills, as well as killing waterfowl. Who would have thought that connection, that level of chemistry, would take place and affect the Great Lakes? It is a serious problem.

There are also problems with the sea lamprey and others. What was interesting was what we were told about the science, the ways to prevent these invasive species and how to mitigate their negative effects to ensure the return of more commercially viable fisheries. Those things are not known when an invasive species is initially identified; it takes science, time and the dedication of DFO and the Minister of Natural Resources in order to come to that conclusion.

My point is that the changes being proposed by the government, simply as they relate to the Fisheries Act and the definition with respect to the protection of fish habitat, are destructive beyond belief, and we cannot allow that to happen. For the government to be so gutless as to hide behind this omnibus bill rather than to bring about these changes in a bill that would go before a legislative committee in order for us to bring experts in to deal with the issue is absolutely wrong. It is fundamentally wrong.

I am talking to Canadians, as are my colleagues, and Canadians are waking up to what the government is doing. We will stand both here in the House and in our communities and do everything we can to ensure that Canadians understand what the government is intending for the fisheries, for the environment and for our society. We will do everything we can, along with lots of Canadians, to ensure that this does not happen.

[Jobs, Growth and Long-term Prosperity Act, May 8th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I enjoyed listening to the member's presentation. He talked for the most part about how he supported the direction the government is going in terms of its allocation of resources, of money, in the budget. He mentioned a couple of programs that he supported.

That is the kind of thing we expect in a budget. That is the kind of stuff that we saw when the Minister of Finance brought down the budget, and that is what we fully expected to be debating here in the House. and that is what we expected to be going forward to the finance committee.

Instead—and I ask the member for his thoughts on this—what we have is a bill that makes significant and fundamental legislative changes to a whole myriad of legislation. Would the member not agree that we should be dealing with budget items and that legislative items should be dealt with in another forum?

[Fisheries and Oceans, May 2nd, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, Conservatives never campaigned on gutting environmental protection, but that is exactly what they are doing.

I will read a quote:

This is a covert attempt to gut the Fisheries Act...it’s appalling [to] be attempting to do this under the radar.

Who said that? It was former Conservative fisheries minister Tom Siddon.

He also said:

The minister...is the one remaining...person in Canada to protect this marvellous, historically important resource...our fishery. That's his job.

The question is, why will this minister not do his job?

[Fisheries and Oceans, May 1st, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, this is not about farmers' fields and drainage ditches. Nobody is buying that line, not even farmers. If that were the government's aim, it could have introduced minor changes to the act in order to deal with that problem.

Instead it has written amendments that, by the minister's own admission, will throw the doors open to major industrial projects at the expense of our fisheries.

When will the minister stop trying to hide his attack on fish protection behind law-abiding farmers?

[Fisheries and Oceans, May 1st, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, it is clear the government just does not seem to get it, that cuts to parks, cuts to environmental protection hurt local economies.

Many coastal communities depend on the fishery and they depend on the laws that protect fish habitat.

The Minister of Fisheries and Oceans is shirking his responsibility. He is abandoning our fishing industry, while giving the oil industry greater leeway to pollute and destroy fish habitat.

Why is the minister putting our oceans, our lakes and rivers and our fishing communities at risk?